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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25199641">The Chronicles of the Mighty Nein</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:47:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,107</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25199641</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A fictional retelling of the Critical Role original series.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Curious Beginnings - Caleb</p><p>He woke up well into the day. When they had been sleeping rough, he’d never had the luxury of sleeping late. But they’d found themselves in an inn, and had been able to afford it with the sort of assorted trickery that niggled a little on his conscious, but only enough that he knew that he wasn’t completely at peace with the situation, even if wasn’t compelled to do anything to put it right, or to stop.<br/>
It was light, but the light was a dirty sort of brown. Not because the room was dirty, but because the curtains were a muddy brown sort of colour and changed the morning light like varnish, but poorly done varnish, because the folds in the fabric made the colour streak across the room in uneven strokes.<br/>
Caleb had slept in everything, apart from his pack. That was on the end of the bed, however, where he could kick it with his foot and be assured that it was still there.<br/>
“You’re finally awake,” said Nott. She had a strangled sort of voice that was always up somewhere high, like she was always panicking. Caleb knew well enough what panic sounded like, and Nott seemed to live her whole life up there, dangling at a precipice, like she’d climbed a tree to get away from something and just made herself at home.<br/>
She peered at him with wide eyes, and despite the fact that the outside of her was rough and pointed and sharp, her eyes were warm, and the same colour as the sort of beer that they made in summer, and that Trostenwald was famous for. Even though it wasn’t quite midday, Caleb thought that a beer would go down well, and maybe he’d get away with drinking so early considering he looked like some kind of vagrant now.<br/>
“Maybe you needed the sleep,” she said.<br/>
He sat up and rubbed his head.<br/>
“Yesterday was a bad day,” Caleb said, like he was trying to rouse some hope that things would get better, but his voice came out grave, like someone complaining that they’d drunk too much the night before. “Not our best day,” he tried again.<br/>
“No, I mean, usually you’re so good at everything, but yesterday, you were just – maybe you needed the sleep, is what you needed. I let you sleep.”<br/>
“Thank you.”<br/>
“Well,” Nott was having a hard time moving on with what she wanted to say because she was swallowing down ‘um’s and ‘ahhs’. “Don’t thank me yet. I should – um - probably tell you what happened while you were – ah - asleep.” Then it all tumbled out at once. “I mean, you were asleep for so long, I got bored, frankly and I was going through my pack and reorganising..”<br/>
“Has anybody seen you seen you?”<br/>
“Well, I mean, many people?” It was a question. She didn’t know. “I got bored. You’ve never slept that long, so I left, I went downstairs, I thought I’d do a bit of window-shopping, and you know how sometimes I get the itch, you know?”<br/>
“I do.” He brushed that aside because there was more important things to deal with besides why she was out and about, like what the consequences of whatever it was that she’d done, and they couldn’t afford to have another bad day.  “Did you make it back here okay?”<br/>
She reinflated with a bit of pride. “I’m here, arent I?” When she was proud, the stumbling went away.<br/>
Caleb smiled a little, despite himself: the sort of quiet smile that came out more like a grimace, as though it came out with a little pain: as though the corners of his mouth were tied to something very painful deep inside him, and when his mouth moved it plucked it like a violin string and vibrated something he’d rather not stir. But he smiled because, despite the fact that they knew very little about one another, and had arrived at an unspoken agreement to consciously avoid talking about anything before arriving in a prison cell, but somehow they had grown very familiar, and understood each other in an intimate way that he hadnt shared with anyone for a long time, and it was nice.<br/>
“You are.”<br/>
“Yeah, I’m here. But I – um -might have been spotted by a-a few of the Crown’s Guard.”<br/>
“Did you have your mask on?”<br/>
“No?” Another question. She didn’t know. She shook her head. Caleb could read it all on her little pinched green face. She knew, she just had to admit it. Caleb was logical, and he just needed facts, and then he could figure it out, and make a plan. “No, I didn’t. But they didn’t catch me, so, listen, I’m sorry, sometimes i get the urge, I’ve got to take something, you know? I was trying to replenish what you lost yesterday, and I failed.”<br/>
“Well, we-“ he sighed and rubbed his head again. This was all happening very quickly, and he wasn’t awake yet, not really. “-we discussed coming to a bigger town. Its going to be a little more difficult now. You cant go- It was easier on the outskirts, it was easier in farms, but we cant do that here.”<br/>
“I know, I’m sorry, yeah, I know. You’re right. Yup. I just got a bit squiggly. That’s all.”<br/>
“Okay, well I think today you should have your mask on at all times.”<br/>
“Yeah. Good idea, Caleb.”<br/>
“It’s better when we’re working together. If you need to steal something, do it with my help, alright?”<br/>
“Yeah, yeah, of cause, yeah”<br/>
A pause.<br/>
“Yesterday was really not great.”<br/>
“Yeah well, we’ll do better today, right?”<br/>
He smiled again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Curious Beginnings - Beauregard</p><p>        Beau loved a bar. Even at lunch time, they were good fun. She was used to sizing people up, but a bar meant sizing up a whole room of people and the dynamics between them, and Beau loved a challenge.<br/>
               She found the best place to size ups o many people was from the top. So, everything she did or said was aggressive, and she wrestled her way to the top of the pecking ordering with loud laughter and flirting with the blonde behind the bar, and the way she sat, slouched down with her feet on the opposite chair, or maybe on up on the side of the table.<br/>
But at lunch time, no one seemed very interested in establishing a hierarchy, even with her challenge. At lunch time, people were sitting and eating and milling around together, and seemed united in their determination to ignore her. She didn’t like that. It made her uncomfortable. She understood a pecking order, but she didn’t like a united mob, even if they were united in indifference.<br/>
               Then Rinaldo came in.<br/>
He had his hat in his hands, and grovelled at the side of their table and asked to take a seat, and with that he had willingly taken up the bottom position on the pyramid, and a hierarchy had begun to fall into place.<br/>
               Jester beamed. “Of cause,” she said, and Rinaldo shuffled onto the edge of one of a seat, and didn’t look anymore comfortable sitting down than standing up.<br/>
               “Thank you for your time,” he said.<br/>
               There was a moment when no one talked, and Jester was beaming straight at Rinaldo, in the sort of way that she seemed to, like standing out in the sun at midday and staring straight up. It was fun to watch.<br/>
               He cleared his throat. “You came,” he said, “when no one else would yesterday, and because of you my daughter is still alive.”<br/>
               “Oh, yeah,” said Beau. Then she felt a bit of regret. This man could easily have been mourning the loss of a child today, and she was revelling in his discomfort. And then she remembered what she’d said the day before, and how she’d told him to expect the worse. “Sorry for being a pessimistic asshole, by the way, when we first came into town.”<br/>
               He fumbled with dismissal; “Oh, no. That’s okay.”<br/>
               “I’m not used to things turning out... good.”<br/>
               He brushed the apology to one side. “I didn’t have much to give you yesterday. I sent you away with nothing but my gratitude. But I’ve been asking around the other fishermen, lochsmen, and we’ve put together a little bit of coin for your troubles.”<br/>
               He turned his hat over and the coins scatter over the rough wooden table. That’s when faces really turned to pay attention to them, and Beau smiled.<br/>
               “We cant accept this, right?” asked Fjord. He didn’t give the pile a second glace, but deferred across Beau to Jester. “I mean, it’s too much.” He had a deep voice that carried, and Beau still hadnt gotten the hang of figuring out whether he was projecting it on purpose of if that’s just the way it was, and he didn’t mean anything by it. She’d figure it out, though.<br/>
               “We’re supposed to at last say that, right?” Beau asked, but quieter, just to Fjord, and watched for his reaction. “Then we still accept it, right?”<br/>
                There was a moment when Fjord seemed to try and figure something out about Beau too. “I think you’re supposed to do it if you say it.”<br/>
                “Well,” cut Jester, and Beau had noticed that she did a lot of talking with her hands, and this time they came up palms first like she was weighing the situation literally. “He did go around to a bunch of people. That was a lot of work on his part. I would hate to make him go back to all those people and give back to each individual person...”<br/>
               Fjord sat back in his chair. “Fine. Fine.”<br/>
               So they agreed to take the coin, and Rinaldo left with as much shuffling as he entered with, and Beau noticed Fjord sit back in his chair and narrow his eyes, and scan around the room. He didn’t seem so comfortable with the attention, but Beau smiled. She made a ring with her arms like she was going in for a hug and started to corral it all her direction.<br/>
              “There are people watching,” he said.<br/>
              Beau thought she might learn more from Fjord if she pushed him off balance too, so she paid no mind, and made a show of counting, especially for the little hooded figure at the next table who wasn’t looking away when she made eye contact because their eyes were completely hidden.<br/>
              “Aren’t ya’ll jealous,” she announced, to no one in particular.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This was a practice in writing in the third-person-limit style, and turned out to be a whole lot of fun. This is a homage to the incredible work of the Critical Role team.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Curious Beginnings - Yasha</p><p>        Yasha stood behind Molly, watching him flit from table to table. He made it look so easy. He seemed to slide into conversation, even though to look at him, he seemed so obtuse. <br/>        People treated the circus folk with suspicion, and then little farming towns like Trostenwald double down on suspicion because people like Molly looked so different to the folk they knew. But everything about Molly was fluid, and water breaks down stone and makes inroads where there weren’t any, if it is determined and tenacious enough.  <br/>        Yasha was happy to stand behind him, and watch it all happen. She found that people were often more receptive to the two of them, after Molly had started weaving his magic, and that suited her just fine.<br/>        He’d made his way through nearly the whole tavern before the woman who was running the bar came over and asked if they would like anything. Yasha wasn’t sure if that was because she was busy – she certainly looked busy – or whether she was reluctant to serve them in the first place, because she was used to that. <br/>        “I’ve never seen a group of so in need of a good time in my entire life!” He began. He held out a flyer between two fingers. “Mollymauk Tealeaf of the Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival or Curiosities,” he introduced, and a blue teafling at the table and a human both lit up with excitement. “Take my word for it!” he continued. “In one months time, people will be buying your ale to hear the tale of what you saw this night!”<br/>        The teafling grabbed Molly’s arm with two hands. He didn’t flinch, and instead leaned in to meet her excited face. “We saw your tent going up! We did!” She turned back to the human, like she needed someone to confirm her story. <br/>        “We were actually going to go without the flyer,” the human said. “But, now we also have a flyer, so...” she nodded her head at the teafling like she was trying to help, but her sentence trailed off like it ran out of steam, but the teafling wasn’t fazed. She just turned back to Molly and beamed. <br/>         “It’s just five copper. A steal! At five silver, it would be a steal. At five gold? Worth every penny!” Yasha knew this pitch well, but Molly had a gift for making it always seem original, hand tailored, no matter who he was talking to. Molly was fluid. <br/>         “Do you perform?” the teafling asked. <br/>         They were still leaning into one another like conspiring siblings. “I tell fortunes.”<br/>         She gasped. “I was going to ask if you tell fortunes!”<br/>        “And I knew you were going to ask that.”<br/>        “My gosh! You’re so smart!” She turned back to the human. “Look at this guy; he knows everything!”<br/>         For two copper, Molly took his tarot deck out of the pocket inside his jacket and shuffled. For two copper Yasha was handed a hefty mug of ale.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This was a practice in writing in the third-person-limit style, and turned out to be a whole lot of fun. This is a homage to the incredible work of the Critical Role team.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Show of Scrutiny - Jester</p><p>	The street was dark, except for the few lights that they’d installed along the main roads, and the lights that the guards were carrying with them. There were quite a few of them around town, walking in little pairs, like they were on late-night dates, and holding lanterns in front of them like the story of the little girl who went to visit her grandma in the forest with treats, but she’d been swallowed by a wolf, and he was pretending to be her so that he could lure the little girl in and eat her too. <br/>“Mollymauk, I don’t mean to pry into your business,” Fjord asked. “Has this ever happened to you before?” He was using his deep voice. He said it was the same voice that his Captain had, and he was right, it did give him lots of authority, and it was very impressive that he could jump between voices like he did. Molly had a nice voice too: like it could slip in and out of laughter easily. He was pretty freaked out though, and you could tell because his sentences kept running into each other and never quite managed to finish. <br/>	“This?” This has never – I mean – there’s never been anything that has ever happened like this before. And thank you. For the record, I don’t owe any of you anything.”<br/>	“Oh, I don’t know about that.”<br/>	“Do you think it was the little girl?” Jester asked. <br/>	“No,” said Molly. “No, that’s an act. That’s not anything. It’s just a show!”<br/>	“Right,” said Fjord. “The large toad that was with the girl; what’s the story there?”<br/>	Molly shrugged. It’s nothing special. It’s just a guy making a buck, all right? He’s fine. He’s fine!”<br/>	But then the questioning stopped because there was a bigger group of guards – you could tell because instead of one lantern, there were a few bobbing down the road - and Beau was standing in between the group with her arms up and two chains being held tight on either side of her. Molly stopped dead in his tracks and for a second stopped panicking, and started to slip back into the jovial teafling they’d bet in the pub.<br/>	“There’s the obnoxious one.”<br/>	The guards didn’t stop, and walked straight past us back towards the stockade. It looked like they had trapped some kind of animal, like the wolf who tried to eat the little girl, except the story that she knew didn’t end that way and they chopped his head off. She didn’t think that people in this town would chop Beau’s head off, but then she gave them the finger when she realised that no one was rushing to help her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This was a practice in writing in the third-person-limit style, and turned out to be a whole lot of fun. This is a homage to the incredible work of the Critical Role team.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Show of Scrutiny - Mollymauk</p><p>The conversation had taken a turn for the serious, and in fact, the whole day had been all kinds of serious, and so Molly needed a drink.<br/>“You – gorgeous – what’s your name?”<br/>The woman behind the bar looked a little taken aback. He was sure that young women behind bars were often flattered and flirted, but Molly knew that his flattering and flirting was different. He had a way of making it subtle and quick, and a part of something else, because that sort of conversation needed a sort of finesse that most of the people who would have talked to her lacked. Drunk people flatter and flirt in heavy swings, and heavy swings often miss. <br/>“I would like a round for all these terrible people,” he said. “And one for myself. What’s the difference between these three beers? I’ve honestly got to admit, they all taste the same to me.”<br/>She smiled and leaned in conspiratorially. “Go with the Von Brant.”<br/>As a rule, Molly always took up a recommendation. “Let’s get a round of Von Brant for everybody.”<br/>Fjord spoke up quickly at the mention of beer. “Actually, I’m not really a fan of ale. Do you have any fire whiskey?”<br/>The little green one was next. “Two of those for me, please.”<br/>Adeline nodded. Then Jester asked for milk instead, and she nodded a little less confidently, and turned around to the kitchen to figure out if what she’d just agreed to was actually possible.<br/>“I’m going to try each of these beers,” Molly announced to no one in particular. “I’m going to have a proper tasting, and I wont be drinking alone.”<br/>The mucky fellow with the long brown coat seemed to agree to that, because he came up to the bar as well, and deposited himself next to Molly. He seemed to prefer drinking to answering the obnoxious ones questions. <br/>Jester gasped when he sat down. “Caleb!” She said. She sidled up to his seat, and Molly could tell by the way that his body froze that he was deeply uncomfortable with finding himself in someone’s attention, when he moved over here explicitly to move out of someone’s attention. “Do you want to see something cool?”<br/>“Yes,” he said, almost without a beat, like he was already prepared to humour her, like you would a little kid who wouldn’t leave you alone. “I would love to see something cool.”<br/>Just below the top of the wooden bar, where the lip of it was supported by wooden struts, she’d etched two little circles and a long bow between them, and Molly smiled. <br/>“I etched this dick a couple nights ago,” she said proudly. <br/>“Oh. That is very good.”<br/>Molly couldn’t help but think the drink was doing its job, even before it had been poured.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This was a practice in writing in the third-person-limit style, and turned out to be a whole lot of fun. This is a homage to the incredible work of the Critical Role team.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Show of Scrutiny - Caleb</p><p>“What do you do with the things once you steal them?” Jester asked.<br/>
“Well the nice ones I keep. I have a little-“<br/>
Jester gasped. He’s noticed she did that when she got excited. “Do you have a collection?”<br/>
“I collect a lot of things. But in the last place we hunkered down, it was all taken from me.” Nott started to look a little sheepish. “We were in one of those prisons before-“ Then immediately she looked up at Caleb. He didn’t feel like they were in any danger at admitting that they’d been in trouble with the law. In this town, they seemed to be the only ones out of this whole rag-tag group that wasn’t in immediate trouble with the law. Beauregard had been dragged into the stockade in chains. Mollymauk was a circus performer, and he imagined that came with its fair share of trouble with Crowns Guard. “Am I sharing too much? I’m sharing too much, aren’t I?”<br/>
Caleb didn’t have to say anything. It was Jester who said “No,” and in the way that made it sound like she was ready to console her new little green friend with all the love and affection of friendship, and that played into their plan to create a pretence of friendship, for as long as it suited them.<br/>
“We were in a prison, and they took all of our belongings. I lost all of my collections. I had a lovely rock collection. I had a rare coin collection. I had a stick collection. It’s all gone now.”<br/>
“What about shiny things?”<br/>
“I love them. I just don’t have any right now.”<br/>
“Because I think if you have sticky fingers for sticks and rocks, I don’t think that will get you in trouble.”<br/>
“True. True. But they were like people’s canes and things.”<br/>
“Oh...” Jester nodded in understanding. What Caleb took as a positive sign was that there was no judgement in her voice. There was just understanding.<br/>
“I mean, I call them sticks because I don’t need them, but I suppose they really needed them...”<br/>
Mollymauk barked with laughter. “There’s only one way to find out.”<br/>
“Wait,” Beauregard interrupted. “I need some clarification. If sticks means things like valuable canes, what do rocks mean to you?”<br/>
“You know: those rocks that humans wear on their fingers and around their necks and stuff. They’re really nice rocks.”<br/>
Jester offered to help Nott begin to restore her collection, and Caleb leaned backwards out of the conversation, and considered that Nott was probably correct after all. These people were loud and attention seeking, even if it wasn’t on purpose. Fjord was the quietest of them, but orcs were rare in enough in the empire that he probably received the same reception as the circus folk. It really was a rag-tag collection of people, and Nott was better than he was at collecting. He was content to let her carry on.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This was a practice in writing in the third-person-limit style, and turned out to be a whole lot of fun. This is a homage to the incredible work of the Critical Role team.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Midnight Chase - Nott</p><p> </p><p>	They still had their armour on, but the guards had twisted to the point where they weren’t standing like they should have been, and their faces had sunken in until they looked far more dried and gaunt than they should have looked. They’d been healthy young men just a little while ago.  Then they opened their mouths to groan and hiss instead of talking. <br/>	One was still up when Nott charged out of the tense and across the far side of the campfire, and fired her crossbow without really looking. She didn’t want to look. <br/>	Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.<br/>	And she didn’t look until she was behind a barrel and almost completely in cover, apart for enough of her head that she could see what was going on. She could where she’d hit, but Nott couldn’t tell if it was hurt by arrow or just generally damaged on account of whatever horrible magic had twisted it until it was what it was now. Then it was on fire, just for a little while - it burst out of nothing and then spluttered out - and then something else slammed into it from her left, and she thought it might have been Caleb. It was Fjord who had his hand stretched out, but then Caleb’s hand was out and started to turn black, like a log that is half in a fire and the end part turns to coal, and then fire streaked through the air, and almost so fast that Nott only just saw it slam into the Crown Guard’s helm. <br/>	Then it hit Molly, and he was down. <br/>	Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. <br/>	Nott was sure the circus man was dead. He’d a healthy young teafling not that long ago. Now he was dead, and the same thing would probably happy to him. He’d twist and shrivel and turn on them all. <br/>	She ran straight at it, until she was half way to the fire. Just one another crossbow bolt, and Nott ran back into the nearest tent, and hid behind the tent opening, where the shadow started where the shadow was out of reach of the firelight. Then there was a horrible screech, and the light burned brighter for a moment, and Nott had to shrink back even further to stay in the dark. <br/>	Then it was quiet, until Jester started calling after Molly. Then she thought her heard the circus man groan and hiss. She loaded the crossbow and waited.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This was a practice in writing in the third-person-limit style, and turned out to be a whole lot of fun. This is a homage to the incredible work of the Critical Role team.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was a practice in writing in the third-person-limit style, and turned out to be a whole lot of fun. This is a homage to the incredible work of the Critical Role team.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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